Blog:It's Brew-Tang Forever as producers get creative

I've just got back from New York, where the owner of a successful string of Manhattan bars showed me one of his latest best-sellers.

It was Jefferson's Ocean, a small-batch Bourbon aged in the hold of a ship that is continually circumnavigating the world. There's a thin veneer of logic to this, as apparently casked spirits age faster if in motion. But, more importantly, as the bar owner told me: Tell the customer this back story and they immediately want to try it.

“Never fails,” he said.

I've got high hopes, then, for on-trade sales of a new beer from Philadelphia’s Dock Street brewery that is aged to the music of hip hop legends the Wu-Tang Clan. According to Time magazine, a smartphone loaded up with the greatest hits of Method Man, ODB and the rest of the gang is attached to the barrel and left to work its magic.

The brew will be called 'Dock Street Beer Ain’t Nuthin’ to Funk With' and is expected to be ready by the end of this year, Time said.

They could well be on to a winner. Especially if they stick the barrel on a boat and sail it around the world a couple of times.